1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a container for housing, storing or transporting an injector piston, which will be hereinafter referred to as a piston nest.
2. Prior Art
As shown in FIG. 7, an injector basically consists of each component comprising an injection cylinder 21 in which injection liquid 28 is filled, a piston 25 inserted slidably into the injection cylinder 21, a nozzle cap 24 for detachably sealing a tip portion 22 of the injection cylinder 21, and a plunger 26 for pushing the piston 25 so that the injection liquid 28 filled in the injection cylinder 21 is flowed out thereof through the tip portion 22.
Pre-filled syringes are now getting popular and are on the market as syringe products in which injection liquid is filled in advance in an injector comprising above mentioned components in combination. Such pre-filled syringes are usually fabricated on a production line of pharmaceutical companies. The nozzle cap 24 is generally capped on the tip portion 22 of the injection cylinder 21 followed by filling the injection liquid 28 therein, and then the piston 25 is inserted to seal the liquid 28.
In general, these components have been conventionally subjected to a cleaning or sterilizing treatment just before their fabrication on the production line so as to fill the injection liquid.
However, the cleaning or sterilizing treatment of injector components is troublesome to pharmaceutical companies, and this is the reason why they strongly request syringe component manufacturers to deliver cleaned or sterilized products.
In order to respond to such a request, the manufacturers tried to control production environments and qualities and, as to the injection cylinder, developed an injector carrying container disclosed in Japanese Patent A Nos. 2004-513,707 and 2004-513-708, thereby making it possible for the pharmaceutical companies to use injectors by simply subjecting the cylinder as a package to the sterilizing treatment. Further, the nozzle cap 24 and the piston 25 are packed in a packaging bag called as a sterilizing bag, partially made of a material such as TYVEK® which selectively passes ethylene oxide gas and vapor but does not passes fine particles and microorganisms, so that the pharmaceutical companies can use these components as they are by simply sterilizing them similarly as the injection cylinder.
The nozzle cap 24 and the piston 25 are usually packed in the sterilizing bag as a unit of several hundreds to several thousands of the same components, which would result in fine particles or outside flaws thereof caused by their vibration and mutual friction during transportation.
On the other hand, when these components are assembled into the injection cylinder after their unpacking, an aligner is necessary to keep them in the same direction, which would cause not only fall off of workability but contamination of foreign substance. From this point of view, it has been expected to develop a packaging method and a packaging container which does not result in flaws nor contamination of foreign substance during transportation or fabrication of injector components.